


The Thing You're Dealing

by bold_seer



Category: Doctor Strange (2016), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Ghosts, M/M, POV Stephen Strange, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-25
Updated: 2020-09-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 01:21:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 725
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26288665
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bold_seer/pseuds/bold_seer
Summary: “Midnight Love, 1982.”
Relationships: Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 6
Kudos: 8
Collections: Trick or Treat Exchange 2020





	The Thing You're Dealing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [days4daisy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/days4daisy/gifts).



Plump raindrops, scarce but stubborn. The late October night is chilly, his hair is damp, he’s cold without the Cloak, which hurried inside. Stephen reaches for the beer, hands shaking slightly. He’s never minded discomfort. There’s something grounding about it, wanting things.

Looking from the roof to the city skyline, he thinks he should get the garden going. Growing with ongoing care, effort and time. Snapped back into existence, people picked up their lives from the ruins and built them up again, brick by brick. They keep picking themselves up. On some days, it’s difficult.

“Free consultation, Doc: you’re lonely,” Tony cuts through, body astral-light beside Stephen’s physical form, steady in comparison. “Basic human needs, more contact than a clingy cloak. Should get off with _someone_. Works wonders, sexual healing.”

Better mood and immunity, less stress. Better sleep and pain relief.

“ _Midnight Love_ , 1982.” Stephen tastes the slight bitterness, sets it aside. “Not that clingy. It doesn’t like rain.”

“Cloak-and-Dagger, missing out on the rooftop date.” Both Tony and Stephen have a thing for the top spot. “The rest?” Tony twirls his left hand in the air. “Lie back and wait for the happy ending. Time of your life.”

It comes to him: apart from the shower to clean off the alien slime (sticky in his hair, like grape jelly conditioner), hot teacup that warmed his hands (discreetly, without Wong looking at him any differently), Stephen doesn’t remember when he felt _good_ in his body. Physical pleasure belongs to his old life, with the leather seats of a Huracán and a Jaeger-LeCoultre around his wrist (crashed the car, watch almost made it). A tux is only so comfortable, but there was an undeniable pleasure in wearing that expensive fabric against his skin, looking professional, his best. The best. He got used to it.

They _can’t_. Tony won’t feel that pleasure again, or skin-to-skin contact. Kindness and pity aren’t the same. Stephen can find it in himself to respond to the former these days, has softened to see that kindness, given and shared, isn’t beneath him. There are still times when it veers too close to pity, worse than no kindness.

He’d rather be propositioned by someone who thinks he looks good, is funny, than accept pity from _Tony Stark_. Lonely - isolated maybe, he wouldn’t admit it out loud - isn’t desperate. If Tony is right, it _stings_. The ghost seeing through him. Stephen’s supposed to carry the answers, secrets, guarding them.

He sighs, makes a fist (bloody and wrapped in guilt). Tony has no family either, nowhere to stay or go, really. Being tied to Stephen, the Sanctum, wasn’t his decision. Isn’t Stephen’s doing, though he is responsible. He knows the helplessness, anger when there’s no choice. “Why?”

“Sorry Red. You’re the closest thing to Demi Moore around here.” Tony shrugs. “I’m _here_. For a while, your life, sort of mine. Ghosts just want to have fun. Think I can undress you?” When Tony’s hand goes through Stephen’s chest, his face stays admirably neutral. “So, don’t wear clothes for bed. Lazy Sunday morning.”

Stephen closes his eyes, tunes out the city. The darkness disappears. It would be a nice way to wake up, not with a sense of duty, but a loose-limbed lack of urgency. Wrinkly sheets. Indulging in pleasure.

Maybe it’s the buzz of alcohol. Stephen isn’t a light-weight. Doctors don’t drink except when they do, but he doesn’t. When he speaks he sounds strange to his own ears. Not slurred but looser, not drunk but pleasantly affected. Mind aroused by the _could be_ \- Stephen could prove Tony wrong; they could drive each other wild on the Astral Plane - pleasure spreading lower.

It would be nice not to have to think. Let someone else decide. Allow someone to - without a plan, the city fades into the distance and becomes the dark, empty room he sleeps in.

He lights the bedside lamp before he trips, then turns.

Tony looks at him, _all right_ , and Stephen nods, ignoring his reservations (not nerves). It’s been long. Longer than a while, another life for them both, never like this.

In his current state, Tony could do anything and not leave Stephen sore and aching. Tony takes his time, and Stephen lets him, body relaxing one quarter of an inch after another, because it feels good. He just feels _good_.


End file.
